Citrix Systems 6.1.0 manual Appendix B. Boot From SAN Environments

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Appendix B. Boot From SAN Environments

Boot from SAN environments offer a number of advantages, including high performance, redundancy and space consolidation. In these environments, the boot disk resides on a remote SAN, and not on the local host. The diskless host communicates with the SAN through a host bus adapter (HBA), and the BIOS of the HBA contains the instructions that enable the host to find the boot disk.

Boot from SAN depends on SAN-based disk arrays with either hardware Fibre Channel or HBA iSCSI adapter support on the host. For a fully redundant boot from SAN environment, you need to configure multiple paths for I/O access. To do so, the root device should have multipath support enabled. For information on multipath availability for your SAN environment, consult your storage vendor or administrator. If you have multiple paths available, then you can enable multipathing in your XenServer deployment upon installation.

Warning:

Boot from SAN settings are not inherited during the upgrade process. When upgrading using the ISO or PXE process, customers should follow the same instructions as used in the installation process below to ensure that multipath is correctly configured.

To install XenServer to a remote disk on a SAN with multipathing enabled:

1.On the Welcome to XenServer screen, press F2.

2.At the boot prompt, enter multipath

XenServer boots to a remote disk on a SAN with multipathing enabled.

To enable filesystem multipathing using PXE installation, customers should add device_mapper_multipath=yes to the PXE Linux configuration file. An example configuration is as follows:

default xenserver label xenserver

kernel mboot.c32

append /tftpboot/xenserver/xen.gz dom0_mem=752M com1=115200,8n1 \ console=com1,vga --- /tftpboot/xenserver/vmlinuz \

xencons=hvc console=hvc0 console=tty0 \ device_mapper_multipath=yes \

--- /tftpboot/xenserver/install.img

For additional information on storage multipathing in your XenServer environment, please see the XenServer Administrator's Guide.

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Contents Citrix XenServer 6.1.0 Installation Guide Trademarks Contents Using Scvmm and Scom with XenServer Boot From SAN Environments Administering XenServer Benefits of Using XenServerWelcome About This DocumentXenServer Editions New Features in XenServerGuest Enhancements XenServer DocumentationReferences System Requirements System RequirementsXenServer Host System Requirements Supported Guest Operating Systems XenCenter System RequirementsInstallation Media and Methods Installing XenServer and XenCenterTo install or upgrade the XenServer host Installing the XenServer HostPage Installing XenCenter To install XenCenterHost Partition Format To connect XenCenter to the XenServer host Connecting XenCenter to the XenServer HostHigh-level procedure Installation and Deployment ScenariosXenServer Hosts with Local Storage Basic hardware requirementsXenServer Hosts with Shared NFS Storage Pools of XenServer Hosts with Shared StorageXenServer Hosts with Shared iSCSI Storage Configuring your iSCSI storageConfiguring an iSCSI IQN for each XenServer host Xe pool-param-set uuid=pooluuid default-SR=iscsisharedsruuid Enabling on Host Installation XenServer and IntelliCacheIntelliCache Deployment Converting an Existing Host to Use Thin Provisioning To enable local caching, enter the following commandsImplementation Details and Troubleshooting VM Boot BehaviorXe sr-list params=local-cache-sr,uuid,name-label Using Scvmm and Scom with XenServer How to install the Integration Suite Supplemental PackIntegration Requirements for Scvmm Integration Requirements for Scom Upgrading XenServer Rolling Pool UpgradesPage Before You Upgrade Upgrading XenServer Hosts Using the xe CLI Before you begin your rolling pool upgradeTo upgrade a pool of XenServer hosts using the xe CLI Before You Upgrade a Single XenServer Host Upgrading a Single XenServer Host Using the xe CLIUpgrading a Single XenServer Host Using the xe CLI To empty the CD/DVD drive of a VM using the xe CLITo upgrade a single XenServer host using the xe CLI Page Upgrading LVM Storage from XenServer 5.0 or Earlier Upgrading LVM-based SRs using the xe CLIApplying Updates and Hotfixes to XenServer Before You Apply an Update or HotfixBefore you begin updating To update individual hosts using XenCenter To update individual hosts using the xe CLIUpdating Individual XenServer Hosts Updating a Pool of XenServer Hosts To update a pool of hosts using XenCenterTo update a pool of XenServer hosts using the xe CLI Licensing XenServer Activating a Free XenServer ProductTo activate a free XenServer product To license XenServer Advanced editions and higher Licensing XenServer EditionsTo configure licensing for XenServer hosts using XenCenter To configure licensing for XenServer hosts using the xe CLIAdditional Licensing Information Grace Period To capture and save the log file Appendix A. TroubleshootingAppendix B. Boot From SAN Environments Appendix C. PXE Boot Installations Configuring your PXE Environment for XenServer InstallationTo configure your Tftp server Preparing the destination system Creating an answer file for unattended PXE installationElement Description Required? Element Description Required? Element Proto dhcp or static